Meghan Wilker is a regular contributor to GTD Times. She is Managing Director at Clockwork Active Media Systems (www.clockwork.net), and a blogger/keynote speaker with Geek Girls Guide (www.geekgirlsguide.com). She lives in Minnesota with her husband and their two children. Meghan discovered GTD in 2005, when she read Getting Things Done for the first time. She’s been honing her GTD skills ever since.
This is a Community Contribution from Meghan Wilker.
In an earlier GTD Times post, I talked about some of the basic ways I use the principles of GTD with my kids. That post focused on Capturing, Clarifying, Organizing and Reflecting at a high level.
This week, I spent the better part of an evening on a Clarifying mission with my kids, and it struck me that the act of processing an inbox with kids is vastly different from how we do it as adults.
If you are a parent who works outside the home, your kids probably generate a lot of artwork during the day. And by “a lot” I mean levels that will wake you up at night with hoarders’ nightmares of having to dig tunnels through the piles of coloring sheets and construction paper stacked floor-to-ceiling in your house. Or maybe that’s just me.
At any rate, Capturing & Clarifying can be particularly helpful in dealing with kids’ art projects. Here’s how I handle it.
One of the categories of Action lists David Allen recommends in Getting Things Done is “Agendas.” This is a great category for tracking items that you want to discuss with people or teams you meet with regularly. Your Agendas lists become a trusted parking lot for things to bring up the next time you have the opportunity to have a discussion. Many people will use Agendas for the staff they manage, and for the manager they report to. Agenda lists can also work well for family members and recurring team meetings.
Here’s how Community Contributor Meghan Wilker uses them:
In the workplace, one of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by being effective. And, in this era of constant — and I mean CONSTANT — interruption, one of the best ways to be effective is to be strategic about how you communicate with others.
Humanity has been stricken with several email-related diseases over the past few years. Two in particular are insidious contributors to the interruptive environment. [Read more →]
A community contribution by Meghan Wilker. Join Meghan and Coach Kelly Forrister on the upcoming Webinar for GTD Connect Members–”Productive Use of Social Media.”
When Google unveiled Buzz a few weeks ago (and Wave a couple of months before that), it got me to thinking about how the emergence of each new technology often means an associated emergence of a new inbox.
These new inboxes now can sometimes creep up without us noticing right away. For example, when I got an iPhone in 2007, texting suddenly became a major new source of input. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a self-professed “Geek Girl” — it’s not like I didn’t have a phone capable of texting before 2007. I did. But, it was rather clunky and I didn’t use it often. Most people I knew didn’t use it much (I’m a Gen Xer, so we don’t text as profusely as those Gen Y youngins do). Once I got an iPhone, texting was suddenly dead simple. Once my PARENTS got iPhones…good night. Suddenly I was getting texts from my Baby Boomer dad (“Hi, honey!” “Did you get that?” “Is this working?”) [Read more →]
A Community Contribution by Meghan Wilker
Near the beginning of a new year, we often take stock of the big things in life. Am I happy at my job? Do I need to lose weight? It’s such a good time to take stock of — and clean up — major sources of stress and a fresh place to start large, complex projects. All of that is great, but this year I’d like to encourage you to think small steps, too.
In my GTD office tour, I made note of a small change I made to my system in 2009 which had a big impact on my overall mood and productivity: my tickler file. Yeah, I know. Really? But, yes…really. My old system (folders on a riser) was fine, but it was clunky. Keeping all the folders orderly meant constantly shuffling groups of 10 folders up and down the riser to keep the current folder at the front. It certainly wasn’t killing me to do it, but it was a small irritant. Barely noticeable, really. [Read more →]
Meghan Wilker–mom, social media maven, and GTD’er-extraordinaire, brings her tips for surviving the holidays GTD-style. Enjoy!
This weekend kicked off the holiday season which, for most people, is synonymous with utter chaos. Often, work projects need to be wrapped up by end-of-year, we are inundated with party invitations from friends, clients, and vendors and — on top of all that — family commitments multiply. Oh, and then there’s that whole “buying presents” thing, which is made all the more fun by the current economy (aka “these uncertain times”).
Here’s how GTD can help you maintain your sanity this holiday season:
Calendar Kung Fu
If you haven’t already gotten a calendar management black belt, use the next two months to earn it. My favorite moves include:
We GTDers sure do like showing off our workspaces. And, naturally, we show them off when they are looking their best: inboxes in a near-pristine state and folders lined up tidily with their labels gleaming in the sunlight. Honestly, I love it. Like many other GTD geeks, I get a perverse pleasure from looking at other people’s workstations. I get inspired and sometimes even pick up an idea for a new way of doing something (like my new Tickler file – LOVE IT!).
But, I also think it’s important to acknowledge that GTD isn’t about always being tidy. In fact, the moments when GTD is most valuable are the messiest and ugliest moments. Take this recent snapshot of my desk, for example.
This is what it looks like after a week that included four speaking gigs, two road trips (to get to some of the aforementioned speaking gigs), an all-day conference, and two birthdays (my husband’s 40th and my son’s first). Oh, and that’s in addition to my full-time job [Read more →]
A couple of weeks ago (during an In Conversation that will be posted later this summer on GTDConnect), David 
Allen asked me if I practice GTD with my kids. In response, I laughed and said, “No.” After all, my daughter is three years old and my son is just nine months. They can hardly do GTD, can they?!
But, in the weeks since we talked, I paid more attention to how GTD factors into our family life and realized that — though they are quite young — there are elements of GTD that I am already teaching my kids.
Of the five levels of control in GTD (capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging), most of what my kids are learning right now has to do with capturing, clarifying and organizing. [Read more →]
